


Five Times Megan Calvet Had a Crush On a Girl, and What She Did About It

by adreadfulidea



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:26:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8779513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: Megan comes to understand herself, bit by bit.





	

**1\. Nancy Walsh**

Megan Calvet was six years old, and her sister’s Anglophone friend Nancy was the coolest person she had ever met.

Nancy had long wavy brown hair that she never cut and and wore striped sweaters and a ring on each finger. Her laugh was as high and clear as a bell. She knew everything about _everything_. And best of all she didn’t mind Megan tagging along when she and Marie-France went out.

Marie-France hated it. She wanted to escape their _maman_ and read purloined copies of _True Confessions_ in peace. Her little sister following her was not part of the plan. “Will you go _home_ ,” she would hiss, as Megan trailed at her heels on a tricycle or dragged her favorite teddy bear through a mud puddle. (Megan wasn’t supposed to get her clothes dirty; somehow she always did anyway.) “You’re so embarrassing!”

“Aw, leave the kid alone,” Nancy would say, every time. “She’s not doing anything.”

One day Nancy came over in the morning when Marie-France and Megan were having breakfast in the kitchen. She had something hidden inside her jacket. “If you guess what it is you can have it,” she told Megan.

Megan’s eyes went round. “Is it a kitten?” She had become obsessed with them since the neighbourhood stray had a litter, and their parents wouldn’t let her catch one.

“Jesus Christ,” scoffed Marie-France, because this was before religion ate her brain.

“It’s not that good,” said Nancy. “And your mother would kill me.”

“If I can’t guess can I have it anyway?” Megan asked, bouncing up and down in her chair. She was no better at waiting for things at six then she would be at twenty-five.

Nancy smiled. “Sure,” she said, and produced a doll from beneath her coat. It wasn’t like any doll Megan had ever seen; not a baby, or a little girl in a pinafore. This doll was a grown-up lady wearing a white silk gown that was embroidered with seed pearls, her hair swept back in an elaborate pompadour. Her smooth china face had red lips and round circles of pink painted on her cheeks.

“She’s beautiful,” Megan said, awed, and put her elbow straight into the scrambled eggs. Beside her Marie-France made a noise of disgust. Nancy would move to Toronto the next year, but Megan gave the doll a spot of honor on her dresser until she was sixteen and the housekeeper knocked it off during a cleaning spree.

 

 

**2\. Genevieve Simard**

Megan was thirteen, and Genevieve Simard was her best friend in the whole world.

Genevieve lived down the street from Megan. They shared three classes at school: history, chemistry and third-period physics. She had curves where Megan continued to have angles and took dance lessons from a real ballerina. They did everything together. At thirteen Megan was filled with a raw hunger she didn’t understand, and all she knew was that she wanted to be with Genevieve as much as possible.

They passed notes under their desks and begged Sister Theresa to be allowed to sit together even though their last names were on opposite ends of the alphabet. When Genevieve called in sick Megan pretended she was too, and they spent the afternoon talking on the phone. Genevieve listed off the boys from their school and Megan rated them.

“Terry?”

“He’s okay. Uses too much pomade in his hair, though.”

“Roch?”

“Cute. Has a girlfriend, I think. Some girl in Ontario.”

Genevieve snorted. “So he _says_. Okay, what about Andrew?”

“Ew,” Megan said, theatrically. “He looks a _wet cat_.” And they fell about laughing, phones cupped against their ears so neither of them missed a minute of the other’s company.

In the summer they rode their bicycles across the neighborhood and smoked contraband cigarettes in schoolyard parks that were devoid of children. Megan wore shorts a lot that summer; her legs were long and lean and she was starting to be proud of them.

It was a drowsy afternoon, warm and muggy. They sat together on the edge of a merry-go-round that was painted in pink or yellow stripes, the metal hot under their skin. Genevieve rested her head on Megan’s shoulder and ran her fingers along the side of Megan’s bare thigh. Goosebumps sprang up in all the places she touched.

“You’re so pretty,” she murmured, lazy from the oppressive heat. When she lifted her head up she was flushed, her mouth slightly open. And it was easy, then, for Megan to bring their lips together. It felt natural.

Genevieve pulled away, giggling. “What did you do that for?”

“I don’t know,” said Megan. “I just wanted to.”

Genevieve stood up. She scuffed the toe of her white sneaker in the sand and smiled. “You get on,” she said. “I’ll push you.”

Megan wrapped her hands around the metal bars and Genevieve spun her around and around, her hair fanning out behind her, her mouth open in in laughter. It was the happiest she had ever been, because Megan was thirteen, and at thirteen she didn’t know yet that love doesn’t last forever.

 

 

**3\. Anita Ekberg**

Megan was nineteen years old and had dropped out of college. She wanted to be an actress and was trying to work up the nerve to tell her parents, who still thought she was attending classes when she was actually hiding out all day at the movies, spending the money they gave her on popcorn and foreign films.

She’d seen _La Dolce Vita_ four times.

She could have blamed Fellini, or Italy, or the dizzying whirl of parties and flirtations and disaster; but it was all Ekberg, for Megan. This luscious life-force of a woman, wading into Trevi Fountain in a strapless black dress. Spellbinding, she thought. Megan couldn’t stop looking at her; she’d never known anyone with a body like _that_. She sat there with a flush creeping up her neck in the dark and felt like she had turned into a man.

A hoary old line she’d heard once recurred to her; _I’d drop my wallet down a storm drain just to see that girl walk across the street._ And in a way, Megan did. She was down to pocket change on her fifth outing with Ms. Ekberg. A month later she would pack up her apartment and leave for New York. But for now, the movies.

That fifth time she bumped into the usher on her way in. “You like this one, huh?” he asked. “I’ve seen you here before.”

“Yeah,” said Megan, her knuckles tightening on the strap of her purse. “It’s pretty good.”

“I love it,” he said, looking over at the blank screen. “I stand in the back and watch. They don’t pay attention.”

She guessed it was Anita Ekberg for him too, until she glanced over her shoulder in the middle of the movie, back into the darkness. He held a cigarette in one hand, burning down slowly, and his eyes lingered on the hangdog handsomeness of Marcello Mastroianni. Softly. Tenderly.

He caught her watching and froze. She smiled at him, and he returned the gesture. A bolt of understanding passed between them like electricity.

 

 

**4\. Peggy Olson**

Megan was twenty-four years old and working as the receptionist at an ad agency. There wasn’t much to it; answering phones, coordinating with the other secretaries to book calendars, ordering supplies. It was like a lot of other places she had been. Except for one thing; _this_ agency had a female copywriter.

Peggy Olson was kind of an odd bird. Her personality was half schoolgirl and half battleaxe. She didn’t really hang out with the rest of the girls - no attending baby showers or going for drinks on Friday night. Megan supposed that made sense, since technically she outranked them. But she didn’t socialize with the guys either. Mostly she worked. All night, sometimes. Megan found her asleep on the couch in the creative lounge in the mornings more than once.

And she was really, really clever. Even the people who didn’t like her - there were plenty of them - would admit she was. Megan wondered what that was like. Being so good at something that it didn’t matter if people liked you.

Scarlett raised her eyebrows in a significant way. “They say she and Mr. Draper… _you know_ ,” she said. “That it’s how she got the job.”

Megan watched them walk across the floor, their heads bent together. Their body language was comfortable, intimate. It wasn’t sexual. “I don’t think so.”

Scarlett sniffed. She was checking her makeup in a hand mirror. “I guess,” she said. “I doubt she’s his type - his ex-wife used to be a model.”

Megan asked Peggy for advice when she got moved to Don’s desk. “I know you used to work for him,” she said. “Is there anything I should know?”

“You could sleep with him,” she said, offhand, digging through a stack of papers on her desk. “Worked out great for me.” And Megan up and choked on the coffee she was drinking.

“Jesus, don’t die,” said Peggy, throwing some diner napkins in Megan’s direction. “I was only kidding!”

“I wasn’t,” Megan wheezed.

“He’s a man,” said Peggy, with a tired shrug. “They’re all the same, aren’t they?” Maybe she’d had a fight with her boyfriend. Or was having a bad day. Or was it possible that she _might_ -

Megan balled up the napkin and held it in the palm of her hand. “Do you ever wish we had other options?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh - like. I don’t know,” Megan said. “I love men. I’ve fallen _in_ love with them. But they’re so hard to understand. It would be nice if there was something else out there. Something easier.”

“Like a nunnery?” Peggy asked, oblivious, and Megan gave up.

 

 

**5\. Joyce Ramsay**

Megan was thirty years old, and divorced, and she kept running into Joyce Ramsay at parties.

Joyce told Megan that she had moved out west “for the sunshine and the girls,” with a wink and a grin. But Megan had seen a lot of New Yorkers trickle into LA during the last couple of years. There was something happening in that city, a kind of internal collapse. Some of them threw themselves into cocaine and clubbing. Some bought enlightenment from spiritual gurus and drank wheatgrass every morning. Joyce didn’t appear to do either. She was resolutely herself, no matter where you put her.

She never seemed unbalanced by anything, a steady ship even in uncharted waters. Megan sat across the room, watching her light the cigarette of the girl next her, and wondered if she could be rattled. If Megan could do it.

Megan put the remains of her joint in the ashtray - she was almost quaint now, with her preference for pot over anything harder - and got to her feet. Joyce smiled at her approach.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said.

Megan extended her hand. “Dance with me.”

Surprise rocketed across Joyce’s face, followed swiftly by dawning comprehension. “Sounds like a plan, sweetheart,” she said, and let Megan pull her in close.

Somehow dancing turned into finding a quiet place to ‘talk’, which turned into Joyce manhandling Megan up against a wall and getting a hand under her skirt. They panted together as Joyce fucked her with slender, careful fingers, her thumb rubbing slickness across Megan’s clit until she twitched, making her eyes sink slowly shut. She came like that - legs spread, her back arching against the wall, excited as a teenager who’d never been touched.

“Come home with me,” she said.

Joyce laughed into Megan’s shoulder. “You know what you want, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Megan. “I finally do.”

 

 

 


End file.
